The problem weren't the sentences it was the meaning behind them and even though people told him it was wrong he still argued that it wasn't.

If someone here tells me I'm wrong, then I'm not allowed to disagree with them? No one has convinced me that I'm wrong, perhaps because everyone was too busy interpreting what I wrote as something I didn't mean.

All I said was basically that ‘not all kinds of paedophilia are equally bad’, and for some reason, most of you went and read that as ‘paedophilia doesn't have to be bad’, and then you went and argued against that—something I had never said in the first place! (Nor did I deny it, but you seem to have acted as if I had agreed with it, which I did not.)

bloodrose
wrote on October 22, 2018 at 7:08 PM
(edited on October 22, 2018 at 7:30 PM)

All I said was basically that ‘not all kinds of paedophilia are equally bad’

You're right, though. The pedophilia that appears to be consensual is way fucking worse. Because now the child doesn't get the cover of having had no choice. Now they sit back and question what the fuck was wrong with them? Why did they allow it? Are their kids going to wind up growing up to be sick fucks, too?

Let's look at the teenage girl dynamic. Girl is sexually active. Meets older man. May be a relative or family friend. Is slowly groomed. Starts relationship with said man. Thinks "hey, finally an adult relationship." Doesn't realize the entire time, he's isolating her from family and friends. He's using adult abusive relationship techniques to keep his ass outta jail. Now she's learned how to be abused. Doesn't even realize it because there wasn't any physical abuse. Moves on when she is an adult as one often does. Now meets a man who is abusive. It takes a lot fucking longer to realize what is happening because of the time spent getting used to being treated in that manner in her big adult relationship as a child.

This is just the example of the most common pedophilia that men constantly call consensual and for which there are little to no consequences for the adult involved.

You absolutely need to stop defending any form of pedophilia, please. You don't know how much worse it gets; and those of us that do shouldn't have to bear our souls to get you to stop. There is a reason it is in the TOS. We don't want to have to deal with the pain of this topic over and over again. If you want to espouse pro-pedo viewpoints, go to the bad place for that.

F3nd1
wrote on October 22, 2018 at 8:43 PM
(edited on October 22, 2018 at 8:44 PM)

You're right. It isn't black and white. It's black and that color that is disturbingly darker than black.

In all of my greyscale illustrations, white presents the (ideal) state of no paedophilia. It does not represent a form of paedophilia that's supposedly okay, and never has.

You're right. It isn't black and white. It's black and that color that is disturbingly darker than black.

So it's white (no paedophilia) and some very dark colours (different kinds of paedophilia), which follows the same concept as the example I have provided.

You absolutely need to stop defending any form of pedophilia, please. […] If you want to espouse pro-pedo viewpoints, go to the bad place for that.

I have not been promoting any pro-pedo viewpoints, and have not defended paedophilia as possibly being okay. Once again, all I did was claim that some forms of paedophilia were worse than the others (or better than the others—those are equivalent statements). Just now you agreed to the claim by providing an example how a case of paedophilia can have worse long-term effects than others. Therefore, it seems like we'd be in agreement on this matter, and that disagreement stems from something I have not claimed or supported.

What I did do was use examples opposite to yours: I presented an example situation where a child was comfortable with being a victim of paedophilia as less traumatic than one where a child was uncomfortable. It's entirely possible that I was wrong on that; I still believe the first would be less traumatic in the short term, but it might be more traumatic in the long term in some (most?) cases.

Therein lies the problem. Supposing that you're right and I'm wrong, what I did was call the more damaging case of paedophilia the less damaging. That does not make me a paedophilia apologist! Again, nowhere did I say paedophilia was okay. I have never disagreed with anyone saying that paedophilia was bad, or that all cases of paedophilia are bad. All we had dissenting statements on is how bad some cases of paedophilia can be in relation to the other.

So why do you interpret that as me being supportive of paedophilia? Where did I claim that paedophilia was okay or acceptable? Can anyone show me, or did all of you who spoke against me just read implications between the lines, which were never intended to be there in the first place? Because honestly, it feels like people are not speaking against me for what I said, but for what they thought I would say or was trying to say. (I was not. I meant what I wrote.)

What I did do was use examples opposite to yours: I presented an example situation where a child was comfortable with being a victim of paedophilia as less traumatic than one where a child was uncomfortable.

Don't dismiss what people are saying as just being a reaction to opposition. When you do this, it informs us that while you see that you're being opposed you are not understanding our reaction and choosing to obnoxiously ignore what we're telling you as clearly as we can spend the energy or emotional resilience explaining.

There is no reason to split hairs on trauma induced by different "shades" of pedophilia because we are saying that the whole act of splitting hairs draws us into the territory of negotiating the morality of "certain types" of pedophilia. It is black and white in terms of whether or not this is appropriate. Who cares if a shade of black is blackest and which black is just "demi-black"? If you really want to stick around in a place that is against pedophiles and pedo apologia, it is inappropriate to split hairs on such a topic because it is a pathway to excusing pedos and nothing else.

There is no "kinder" version of pedophilia, and there is no room for analysis on the variations of it when it really doesn't matter once you've crossed the line into abuse.

If you're just a contrarian, I would back off from defending subtleties in topics that only serve to negotiate the morality of pedos based on the interpretations of feedback from unwitting and tricked victims.

You keep saying that you never said "that pedophilia is ok or acceptable" but when you give examples you include descriptors like "kind approach". Having the perspective that there could be any amount of "kindness" in this situation is the part that is being called "apologia".

Honestly, the best thing that you can do right now is apologize for trying split hairs about "different shades of morality in pedophilia" and forcing everyone to have to spend time educating you on disturbing topics where your side would ultimately would ever serve pedos. Also, I don't know why you thought it was ok to rewrite the meaning of an article in f/trans that was meant to address casual transphobia, but that's a whole other case that is not helping your appeal for an unban, but for which I think another apology is needed.

Don't dismiss what people are saying as just being a reaction to opposition. When you do this, it informs us that while you see that you're being opposed you are not understanding our reaction and choosing to obnoxiously ignore what we're telling you as clearly as we can spend the energy or emotional resilience explaining.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here (sorry about that). You're right that I see myself being opposed, and chances are that I don't understand your reaction (as is apparent from my trying to explain why it's misplaced), but it's not that I dismiss what any of you are saying; I do read what you say, I just disagree with some views, and with some interpretation of my own views (which I ought to know pretty well). I'm not sure if that addresses my ‘dismissing what people are saying as just being a reaction to opposition’.

[…] It is black and white in terms of whether or not this is appropriate. Who cares if a shade of black is blackest and which black is just "demi-black"? If you really want to stick around in a place that is against pedophiles and pedo apologia, it is inappropriate to split hairs on such a topic because it is a pathway to excusing pedos and nothing else.

There is no "kinder" version of pedophilia, and there is no room for analysis on the variations of it when it really doesn't matter once you've crossed the line into abuse.

I do know that I disagree with you on this. If the nuances between ‘black’ and ‘demi-black’ do exist (as I have argued), then they may be observed and distinguished between. I am not saying these nuances are always relevant and appropriate to be taken in consideration, but there may very well be numerous situations in which they are (because considering any set of real differences as irrelevant in every situation would be blatant ignorance—which I am pointing out for contrast, not accusing you of it).

And I still firmly believe that the situation in which I spoke of child abuse was one of such situations, where it was relevant and appropriate. If we are to talk about the extent of harm done to children in sexual acts, it only makes sense to examine these nuances, without which it is impossible to determine the extent.

Now please do note that the original point I discussed was not how good or bad paedophilia was; I believe I have presented no stance on that matter. What I did say was that the effective harm caused to children by paedophilia could vary substantially, and that we could observe some instances of paedophilia to be less or more damaging, based on the amount of harm done to the victim. I have not ever suggested that it should be used to determine whether paedophilia could be acceptable or excusable.

If you're just a contrarian, I would back off from defending subtleties in topics that only serve to negotiate the morality of pedos based on the interpretations of feedback from unwitting and tricked victims.

That is a good point. I have defended subtleties (though depending on how broadly we define ‘paedophilia’ for our use, they could very well be substantial differences in the topic of harm caused by paedophilia) for the very reason that they exist and could be useful in various situations, and therefore shouldn't be dismissed. My aim was not exactly negotiating morality of paedophilia as a whole, and if my arguments serve ill purposes, this criticism is entirely valid, and I thank you for getting it across.

You keep saying that you never said "that pedophilia is ok or acceptable" but when you give examples you include descriptors like "kind approach". Having the perspective that there could be any amount of "kindness" in this situation is the part that is being called "apologia".

(Note: The one following paragraph contains vague descriptions of violence, seeing as some people prefer to know beforehand.)

Well, once again, I am not talking about the state of things as a whole. Any complex act, including sexual abuse, can be decomposed into smaller ones, which together make up the whole. For instance, were I do kidnap some innocent person and murder them, there are countless ways I could do that. I could tie them up in a dark basement, leave them locked up without food or water for three days straight, then beat them up, do some horrible things to them, and finish them off in some slow and painful way. Or I could lock them up in a basement, give them a last meal, assure them their loved ones are in no danger, and finish them off in the quickest and least painful way I could think of.

Now, is either of those okay or acceptable? No, in both I would commit horrible acts by restraining someone's freedom and then taking their life. I did something bad based on that fact alone, and how I did that doesn't change anything about it. But the differences are there nevertheless, and shouldn't be discarded! They may be irrelevant to the question of whether what I did was good or not, but they may be very relevant to the question of how much suffering I caused to the person. In the first case, I made them suffer a lot for my own twisted sadism. In the latter, I went out of my way to minimise the suffering they had to go through. This way, even if the whole act is unquestionably terrible it itself, you can find semblance of kindness even in there. That's not saying the kindness will be significant to all or many purposes, but it is there, we can find it, and we can name it and talk about it. We can dispute whether doing so would ever be useful, and if so, when, but it's not what I would call ‘apologia’. And to make sure this isn't our central point of disagreement: Is that what you would call ‘apologia’?

(Note: I wrote in first person as an example. I have no inclination towards doing anything like that.)

Honestly, the best thing that you can do right now is apologize for trying split hairs about "different shades of morality in pedophilia" and forcing everyone to have to spend time educating you on disturbing topics where your side would ultimately would ever serve pedos. […]

I retain my position that this ‘splitting hairs’ is quite alright, at least if we agree on which hairs we are splitting. If the hair is bad indeed, then no amount of splitting will change the fact, but it can be quite helpful if you're trying to examine the structure of hair, or understand someone else who's been splitting them. From this position I also find that examining hair will only serve understanding, and not child abuse, unless we tangle it into distraction.

With that written, I will not apologise for splitting hairs, but I will apologise for any tangled hair that any clumsy handling on my side may have caused to be. And sorry to those I may have caused to spend time and effort educating me on disturbing topics I didn't specially need education on. As for those who did let me know something new and useful, thank you; that was useful by definition.

(As for the transphobia, it is indeed probably wise not to deal with it right here, so I'll retain my comments.)

/u/GrimWillow did a better job than I will at this, but I'll give it a whirl:

Yes, you did not explicitly say "Pedophilia is okay." However, you did say that you thought it was reasonable to be skeptical that pedophilia is harmful. You did try to come up with an example in which a child "consented".

If you were in a group of people who beat someone to death; in this instance, you didn't produce the killing blow but you sure helped with a few punches and kicks.

You don't have to be explicitly for something to be doing the work of slowly chipping away at the opposition to it.

[…] However, you did say that you thought it was reasonable to be skeptical that pedophilia is harmful. You did try to come up with an example in which a child "consented".

I did say it seemed reasonable to be ‘sceptical that voluntary paedophilia was harmful, until proven wrong’, commenting on Richard Stallman's statement. Firstly, being sceptical of anything is reasonable, until you come across a firm base to support it. It is reasonable to be sceptical that a stone tossed into water will sink, but coming across a firm base for that is very simple, and many of us do so very early. Determining and examining all the kinds of harm caused by paedophilia gets more complex. Based on an article which Richard Stallman linked to in one of his posts, we can easily suppose that he did not come across a base to support the claim that paedophilia is always harmful, but did come across a base to support the claim that paedophilia does not have to be harmful.

Were he dealing with stones, he would have only found a reason to believe that a stone tossed into water will float, and without any evidence for it, being sceptical of the claim that a stone tossed into water will sink would be reasonable of him.

Now, a whole different problem is the wording of ‘voluntary paedophilia’. It has been pointed out that children can not give consent to sex, as in making an informed and rational decision whilst being aware of its implications and consequences. I do not challenge this statement, which also presents a rather specific definition of ‘consent’, which seems to be the norm when talking about sexual relations, and it's probably my bad that I have used the word in broader meaning.

In common language (from what I have observed), ‘consent’ may be equated to giving an affirmative response to a suggestion (e.g. saying ‘yes’), with little regard to the ability and qualification of the subject to make a certain decision of importance. Likewise, ‘voluntary’ may be understood as ‘was up for it at the time’, not ‘had the capacity to foresee the deep meaning and possible consequences of their choices, and ended up consenting’.

Children have some capacity to feel and think rationally, which does not mean they are able to consent to sex in the exact definition, but generally speaking, they can say if they like or dislike, and want or do not want something. In broad understanding of the terms ‘consent’ and ‘voluntary’, children are perfectly capable of them, and one could normally use them when talking about topics less serious than paedophilia. (E.g. Jimmy consented to lending his brother his teddy bear, and the next day, his brother voluntarily gave it back.)

So, given the relatively broad meaning of those terms, it's very thinkable that they will be used in their broad sense even when discussing topics where more precise definitions exist. I am used to interpreting the terms in their broad meaning, which is what I did in my comments (at least in the early ones). Consider these phrases I wrote:

Legally they are unable to consent (and I suppose there's a good reason for that), but not ‘completely’ unable.

That is not to say the second victim is mature enough to be sexually active […]

They only make sense if we consider the broad meaning of ‘consent’. I am clearly implying that there's they're able to consent by some interpretation of the word (by saying they're not ‘completely’ unable), and implying that there's a different, more rigid definition of consent in place (talking about ‘legal consent’). And further on:

There may be no capacity to give valid consent to sex, but there is a capacity to determine ‘I'm comfortable with this’ or ‘I'm uncomfortable with this’.

Here again, I speak of consent which may be considered valid, and consent which may be considered invalid. This maps to content by the rigid definition, and consent by the broad definition, which I normally use. If we discard the broad definition of consent, and interpret ‘consent’ by the rigid definition whenever I mentioned it, my replies will not make that much sense.

So, to be more precise in my wording, what I did was come up with a situation where the child ‘gave an affirmative response to a suggestion’, and ‘was up for it at the time’, therefore experiencing less suffering through the act than someone who ‘gave a negative response and was definitely not up for it’ would. Does that shift my perceived position on the matter a bit?

If you were in a group of people who beat someone to death; in this instance, you didn't produce the killing blow but you sure helped with a few punches and kicks.

You don't have to be explicitly for something to be doing the work of slowly chipping away at the opposition to it. […]

I'm not sure how exactly should I map ‘this instance’ to a situation where I'm in a group of people beating someone to death, so please feel free to elaborate on that, should you want to see me succeed at the task. But I think I may have partly addressed your concern near the end of my reply to /u/GrimWillow/, in which I also project myself into the role of a hypothetical murderer, which you might find of interest!

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